This limits how often patients can be tested with CT systems, 3D mammography for breast cancer screening and other 3D X-ray approaches.

Instead of using an X-ray camera, the approach utilises a sensor. Thus, this makes the 3D medical imaging setup much cheaper.

The proof-of-concept approach took a 3D ghost image of a simple object of 5.6mm diameter at a relatively low resolution of about 0.1mm.

A new ghost imaging measurement system was devised by the team. It used a series of X-ray beams with patterns.

Each beam was then split into two identical beams. The pattern was recorded in the primary beam, which acted as a reference since it never passed through the object that the researchers were imaging.

The secondary beam passed through the object, with only the total X-ray transmission measured by a single sensor.

A computer was then used to create a 2D X-ray projection image of the object from these measurements.

This process was repeated with the object at different orientations to construct a 3D image.

The most important innovation was to extend this 2D concept to achieve 3D imaging of the interior of objects that are opaque to visible light.

3D X-ray ghost imaging, or ghost tomography, is a completely new field, so there is an opportunity for the scientific community and industry to work together to explore and develop this exciting innovation.

A co-researcher from Monash University likened the team’s achievement to the early day of electron microscopes. Back then, it could only achieve a magnification of 14 times.

This result was not as good as could be obtained with even the crudest of glass lenses using visible light.

However, the microscope using electrons rather than light had the potential, which was realised only after decades of subsequent development, to see individual atoms, which are much tinier than an ordinary microscope, using visible light, can see.

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